K.Mandla's blog of Linux experiences

Greetings from Slitaz 3.0

It’s been a year since the last “stable” release of Slitaz, and whether or not the yearlong break is part of the development plan, I have been chomping at the bit, waiting for this new version.

Slitaz is very impressive, no matter how you slice it. Distributions like Ubuntu or OpenSuse or Fedora shudder to their foundations when someone points out that it’s possible to run an entire desktop on a measly 30Mb disk image. And the fact that it will install and boot and run a graphical desktop on machines as old as this one only underscores the kind of bloat that everyone talks about, but nobody challenges.

If I could build an entire system — and I have tried — I would want it to turn out just like Slitaz. Even my lightest, fastest efforts with outdated software in custom-built configurations can’t stand up to what Slitaz gives you for nothing. It’s fantastic stuff.

Slitaz isn’t the only ultra-lightweight distribution out there — Tiny Core Linux is excellent, someone will no doubt mention DSL, and Kolibri was mind-blowing — but it’s definitely one of the best. I heartily recommend keeping this on hand, even if you don’t use it on a daily basis. A gold smilie for the Slitaz crew: :D

Heard you were running a short in Slitaz from Nils Kunnas (yo, Nils!!)

I have to say I’m pretty darned impressed. It’s been a way more pleasant experience for me compared to a “cooking” version I tried around 8 months ago.

Currently only running it on Live-USB mode, but it’s been pretty sweet in it’s 4 hours of uptime (Midori crashed once, though). Can’t seem to get my blasted Broadcom WiFi to work in Live mode, but signs in the forum point to it being usable if you get it installed… have to wait and see, I guess

Openbox has been my favourite mid-weight WM for quite a while. I might dedicate a partition of my netbook to Slitaz in the near future. If I can get it to look like how I want (current Sidux+OB setup = http://omploader.org/vM3lkNg) with CrunchBang-like dmenu integration and keybindings, it might turn out to be the perfect netbook OS for me, mainly due to it’s speed and the fact that I don’t rely on that many apps or need an extensive repo for my netbook use (it boots as fast as my Sidux and ArchBang installations, despite Slitaz running from USB only.. will probably blow them away once installed on the SSD)

Grr.
Had looked forward to 3.0. Tried it on an older machine and
would not boot as livecd. Just got vertical lines. No joy.
Tried a Dell B110 w/768 mb Ram with an ACER 18.5 X183CH crt and it booted livecd. However like 2.0 the fonts are so big it overpowers (takes up) too much real estate and is not acceptable. The splash screen has the buttons only showing the top half. A site like yahoo is too big to fit the screen.
Until this is corrected…

I’ve been using cooking since 2.0 on my EEE PC 701 4G. I haven’t updated to 3.0 but use the beta.
I recommend installing nitrogen and letting it manage it the desktop instead of pcmanfm so conky works and icons are gone. Also edit the /etc/rcS.conf to enable fastboot, I boot from button to browser in 17 seconds!
Slitaz constantly impresses me with power in such size. I’m glad you’ve given this distro some glamour, until recently it wasnt even in distrowatch!

It’s a nice distro apart from the fact that it only detected video hardware correctly and gave a decent workable resolution on 1 out of my 4 machines and something as basic as wifi doesn’t work out of the box. Ubuntu and Fedora may be shaking in their boots but frankly I doubt it if that is the competition…

I have a feeling that the ‘bloat’ that others deride so much actually manifests as additional ease of functionality.

Wifi works OOTB, just not the GUI. All it takes is a simple script to replace it. Or you can use the standard ifconfig-iwconfig-udhcpc multicommands.
Installing the package 915resolution allows for widescreen resolutions.
To be honest Slitaz is wonderful but doesn’t have to many packages (No NetHack!!!) and quite a few of larger ones, such as abiword and vlc, are broken.
Oh well, it creates a nice mix between CLI and GUI

Just downloaded slitaz 3.0 few days ago, did md5 check, no worries there so burnt it to disc and fired her up, everything loaded very promptly and seemed to run flawlessly. First time ive used Midori Browser, quiet impressed with it actually, layed out well and quiet snappy too. One issue is slitaz hasn’t configured the correct screen resolutin “Dell Ultra 2005 20inch” widescreena aspect, though i see there’s a package to correct that, good stuff!
This morning i have installed to a USB using Tazusb Live Tool, and it install with no problem, very straight forward, and in the blink of an eye :)
Slitaz has just about all i want straight out of the box, so i must complent the team here for such a great package selection and a job really well done. Just amazing!
Just prior, i had been trying out the latest Lighthouse Pup 4.43G2 and although it runs ok, i have decided i prefer Slitaz.
As for the other main distro’s that get most of the media attention, they still have continued issues, and i would like to raise here, moving forward is about addressing all issue’s at hand firstly. I only hope Slitaz doesn’t follow suit, because it has the potential to be a real winner, if not already.